I am writing this on a ~2009 Thinkpad X301 that I refurbished into a Chromebook. I have never bothered with Chrome OS before, but now I must say I am very impressed. It is fast, responsive and just works. By default it is a light weight web client, but can be extended to meet the needs of power users.

Windows 10 has trashed a lot of hardware recently. It can be too demanding for computers just a few years old, as it keeps on churning background tasks (Updates, app store updates, virus scans, who knows what…), making the system laggy and unresponsive. Linux is better in many ways, even though I recently mythbusted the so called light variants. Chrome OS is Linux, but Google and open source contributors have been able to optimize it in some way as the end result outperforms “traditional” distributions.

Meet Neverware CloudReady

So Chrome OS is open source, based on the Chromium project. New York based startup Neverware has made a business out of providing their fork of Chromium of for educational institutes, refurbishing old laptops into Chromium based class room PCs. The product is known as CloudReady, which is available for free for home users.

CloudReady comes as a bootable USB image file. You flash it to your stick using Chromebook Recovery Tool, or with dd if you are coming from Linux. Stick it into your target PC and boot from USB. Test that everything works and if you are happy with it, click on install from the system tray menu.

CloudReady install wipes the whole harddrive clean.

If you have UEFI-based Windows 10 installation, you can dual boot.

It is possible to install a Linux distro afterwards as dual boot, but you may need to do some manual Grub tinkering (Haven’t tried this yet).

At first you will feel stoopified by the super simplistic user interface, but it runs very responsive and fast. Nowadays there are quite a bit of useful apps available in the store. By default your main tools are Google’s web services, which allows light spread sheet calculations, word processing to name a few, and of course the cloud storage provided by Google Drive. But nothing is stopping you from using Microsoft’s Office Online either.

Chrome app store has games, photo editors and all kinds of useful stuff availble. Web admins appreciate the availability of an SSH-shell. And power users can even install Ubuntu or Debian Linux inside the Chrome operating system, if you need more powerful tools for creating content or developing software - check Crouton, which is used even by some Google devs.

Some CloudReady FAQs:

Is my laptop compatible?

Most standard hardware is. Boot the live USB media and test. Neverware has certified over 200 different PCs, but it will work on many others as well. Chromium/Cloudready is currently based on Linux kernel 4.4

Will Netflix and other DRM-enabled video services work?

Can I use Android apps on CloudReady?

Currently no. But Neverware has said that if Google open sources the relevant pieces, it is not totally impossible in the longer term future.

How do I update the CloudReady?

Neverware delivers updates over the air, and your system is always up-to-date. Chrome OS aims to be a zero maintenance system.

Conclusions

Google released the Chrome OS a little early. The world was not ready for a web first operating system back in 2009. But they did not quit and things look very different in 2017. The world is very much web and cloud centric and you can do a whole lot more without standalone offline applications. Chromebooks have reportedly outsold Apple computers in the USA during 2016 and the educational scene is their primary target market. Now with the emerging Android support, the whole Chromebook / Chrome OS concept is the most interesting thing happening is desktop/laptop computing.

Go bleeding edge with Chromium OS

CloudReady aims for stability and updates are not too frequently distributed, thus they are couple of steps behind Chromium OS development. If you want to go hardcore and explore the most recent developments, then check out Arnold The Bat’s Chromium OS builds. He even provides special builds with added hardware support.

My Thinkpad converted into a CloudReady Chromebook just received the v56.2 update, which has been in beta testing for a couple of weeks. This update brings CloudReady up upstream Chrome OS version 56, which was released last February, so it’s only two months behind.

I have had couple of CloudReady machines running ever since I started this thread, and the experience has been super smooth – literally zero glitches. Updates are rolled out with a steady pace and zero issues or regressions for me.

Hi CloudReady fans, Well over three years ago, when we first developed the idea for CloudReady and began work on it, we didn’t know what the future would bring. Like many ideas, it seemed at the time like a very good one—there was a definite...

In October NeverWare announced additional funding and the fact that Google has invested in them. This is significant news adding a lot of credibility to the platform. It shows that Google is seeing them as a partner rather than hostile competitor, even though the products (Chrome OS, CloudReady) compete in the same educational market.

On other news, CloudReady v60.3 is rolling out with imporant fixes and updates.

NeverWare is expanding their operations. After receiving funding from Google and others, they have recently purchased Flint Innovations, the company behind FlintOS.

FlintOS is a very similar project than ChromeOS: A Chromium based variant targeted towards the education market. This deal has a number of potential effects:

FlintOS development team joins NeverWare CloudReady

Flint is based in the UK, so NeverWare now has an office on this side of the pond.

Flint has been working on Android compatibility, which NeverWare has so far neglected. This could improve the chances of having Google Play Store in CloudReady in the future.

Meanwhile my personal CloudReady has remained extremely positive. My old setup has been working perfectly and receives frequent updates that add new features. If you have an old laptop lying around, do yourself a favor and try CloudReady!

Neverware is innovating further with Cloudready. During this year they have been adding support for native Linux applications by utilizing Docker, Flatpak and virtualization technologies. All of this is still in development phase, but according to use comments there are many applications already.

From CloudReady / ChromeOS point of view this adds whole new possibilities and use cases for a Chrome based PC. No longer you are depending on online web services only, but instead you can install traditional offline applications like office tools or image editors. Google has been expanding the Chrome OS functionality by adding Android support, but the open source variants have not been able to do that. Therefore adding native Linux support is a great way of adding value to the operating system.

I have been running CloudReady on a old Thinkpad X301 since starting this thread in March 2017. It has worked flawlessly and without interruption while receiving constant operating system updates and improvements.